Self Portrait Suspended (2004)
YBA photographic art by
Sam Taylor-Wood. A graduate of
Goldsmiths College, Taylor-Wood
went on to become an active
film-maker and photographer.

EVOLUTION OF VISUAL
ART
For details of art movements
and styles, see: History of Art.
For the chronology and dates
of key events in the evolution
of visual arts around the world
see: History of Art Timeline.

Death 2003. Painted Bronze Sculpture by
Jake and Dinos Chapman. Private Collection.
Short-listed for the 2003 Turner Prize. A typically shocking "work
of art" by two of
the best known but controversial Young British Artists.

WHAT IS ART?
For a guide to the different,
categories/meanings of visual
arts, see: Definition of Art.

Introduction

During the late 1980s and 90s, postmodernist
art in Britain was revitalized by the emergence of a confident new
generation of postmodernist artists,
later dubbed Young British Artists. Belonging to no particular
movement, or style of art, they included a diverse mix of painters, sculptors,
video/installation artists and photographers,
with no shared characteristics other than their youth, their nationality
and their involvement in contemporary
art. Their work is often called Britart. YBAs came to notice
because of three art exhibitions: Freeze (1988) and Modern Medicine
(1990), both curated by an unknown Goldsmiths' College art student called
Damien Hirst (b.1965),
and Sensation (1997), held at the Royal Academy. From 1988 onwards,
the principal YBA sponsor was the millionaire collector Charles
Saatchi, whose patronage helped to make London the European capital
of postmodernism. The term Young British Artists comes from the
title of six exhibitions of that name held at the Saatchi Gallery in London,
during the period 1992-6. Now very much part of the British arts establishment,
YBAs have featured as regular winners of the Turner
Prize, and have been elected members of the London Royal Academy.
They have been exhibited in many of the best
galleries of contemporary art in Europe. As well as Hirst, notable
artists associated with the Young British Artists 'movement' include:
Tracey Emin, Jake and
Dinos Chapman, Douglas Gordon, Marcus Harvey, Gary Hume, Rachel Whiteread,
Gillian Wearing, Mark Wallinger, Marc Quinn, Steve McQueen, Chris Ofili,
Jenny Saville and others.

The term Young British Artists was
really no more than a marketing tool to promote UK contemporary art during
the 1990s. Strictly speaking, it includes only those artists who showed
at Freeze, or Sensation. However, the name is also used
in a broader sense to embrace all progressive, avant-garde British artists
who achieved recognition during the late 1980s and 90s. A new term Post-YBAs
has been coined to describe British artists emerging in the 2000s. They
include Darren Almond, Mike Nelson, Tim Noble, Oliver Payne, Nick Relph,
Eva Rothschild, Simon Starling, David Thorpe, Sue Webster, Carey Young,
and others.

Characteristics
of YBA Style of Art

Works by Young British Artists include
all forms of painting, a wide range
of sculpture and assemblage,
contemporary video and installation
art, a variety of photography,
and conceptual art. If they have anything
in common, it is probably an anything-goes attitude to materials and the
creative process. Thus famous works of Britart have included: maggots
(Hirst); dead animals (Hirst); concrete casts of whole houses (Rachel
Whiteread); a bed surrounded by highly personal detritus including condoms
(Tracey Emin); crushed found
objects with a steamroller (Cornelia Parker); elephant dung (Chris
Ofili); and frozen blood (Marc Quinn), to name but a few of the many and
varied materials employed. Numerous YBA works have also employed a number
of controversial references (such as Jenny Saville's paintings of grossly
obese nude female forms, or the Chapman brothers' savagely mutilated shop-window
dummies), in order to shock. Yet others have taken conceptual art to its
limits. Witness Mark Wallinger's Turner Prize exhibit - a 2-hour film
of a person wandering around an art gallery in a bear suit; or Gillian
Wearing's video of actors dressed in police uniforms who stand still for
an hour, in silence; or Martin Creed's installation of a white room with
a single light bulb blinking on and off.

Impact on UK Art

YBAs have been heavily criticized for their
lack of craftsmanship and other artistic qualities, by numerous art
critics as well as such luminaries as the composer Simon Rattle, and
the playwright Tom Stoppard. Yet others, including the British public
have given Britart a very enthusiastic reception, as has - in general
- the visual arts establishment. One reason for this, is that Young
British Artists have refreshed and revitalised almost every medium
of contemporary art, visibly raising museum attendance figures in the
process. Furthermore, they have re-vitalised a whole new generation of
contemporary galleries - including Jay Jopling's White Cube, Victoria
Miro, Karsten Schubert, Sadie Coles, Maureen Paley's Interim Art, and
Antony Wilkinson Gallery - significantly increased the circulation of
contemporary British art magazines - including Frieze, Art Monthly, Art
Review, Modern Painters and Contemporary Art.

YBA History

The 1980s in Britain was a time of radical
political and economic change. It also saw the 1984 launch of the Turner
Prize for contemporary art, as well as the emergence of advertising
mogul Charles Saatchi as Britain's most important post-war art
collector. Saatchi began showing his collection to the public in 1985,
from his gallery in St John's Wood. Early acquisitions were in the area
of Minimalism and Neo-Expressionism,
along with a substantial holding of works by Andy
Warhol. (See also: Andy
Warhol's Pop Art of the 60s and 70s.) The 1980s was also a highpoint
for Goldsmiths' College, part of the University of London, which
offered a highly progressive arts program under such influential teachers
as Michael Craig Martin. Nearly all of the 42 YBAs who showed at the Sensation
exhibition trained at Goldsmiths.

Freeze Exhibition
1988

Against this backdrop, a 2nd-year Goldsmiths'
student Damien Hirst organized an exhibition of work by himself and 16
other Goldsmiths' College students, in a large disused building in the
Docklands area of east London. Entitled Freeze, the show was made
possible by the economic recession which had 'emptied' such properties.
Although the event did not achieve any significant press exposure, it
attracted a number of prestigious visitors, including Charles Saatchi,
who purchased the majority of the exhibits. Looking back, Saatchi admitted
it wasn't the quality of the art which really turned his head as a collector,
"What really stood out was the hopeful swagger of it all."

Other YBA Exhibitions

After graduating from Goldsmiths' in 1989,
Hirst achieved a major breakthrough in 1990 when he co-curated two more
influential 'warehouse' shows, in a Bermondsey factory. At the Modern
Medicine exhibition, Saatchi reportedly was gob-smacked by Hirst's
installation A Thousand Years. Saatchi immediately bought the piece
thus initiating a long and fruitful business relationship with the young
artist. Up until now, Saatchi's main focus had been on established figures
like Andy Warhol, Phillip Guston, Alex Katz, Richard Serra, Anselm Kiefer,
Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Donald Judd and others. Now he turned his
attention to the new upcoming group of YBAs.

Also in 1990, YBAs Henry Bond and Sarah
Lucas curated the East Country Yard Show, whose exhibits were displayed
over 16,000 square metres of space. Although overall visitor attendance
figures remained low, the show captured the attention of critics and some
collectors, and signalled the coming rise of Britart.

According to Andrew Graham-Dixon, art critic
of The Independent, the YBA shows were far superior to comparable
events held at any of the country's established contemporary art institutions,
including the Liverpool Tate new multi-million-pound venue. As a result,
commercial galleries - such as Joshua Compston's gallery (Shoreditch)
and the Serpentine Gallery (Hyde Park) began showcasing YBA works. Soon
after this, a new wave of YBAs appeared in exhibitions such as New
Contemporaries, New British Summertime and Minky Manky.
Among them was the Anglo-Cypriot artist Tracey Emin (b.1963).

Charles Saatchi
Patronage (1992-97)

Not long after the 1991 Serpentine show,
the Saatchi Gallery began
a series of six exhibitions devoted exclusively to YBA art, entitled Young
British Artists I-VI. Staged during the period 1992-1996, these shows
not only established the label "Young British Artists",
which turned out to be a very potent marketing tool, but also generated
massive media coverage for many late 20th
century painters and contemporary artists from Britain, thus helping
them to establish their reputations at home and abroad. Thus for example,
in 1995, Britart crossed the Atlantic with its large-scale group show
entitled Brilliant! held at the respected Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,
USA; while Damien Hirst's pickled shark (The Physical Impossibility
of Death in the Mind of Someone Living) became a worldwide symbol
of avant-garde British art in the final decade of the 20th century.

Finally, in 1997, in a show of official
recognition of the movement, Saatchi was permitted to co-curate the Sensation
exhibition at the Royal Academy
of Arts in London, which featured works by 42 YBAs from his private
collection. Thanks to Charles Saatchi, Young British Artists were
now part of the postmodernist establishment.

Turner Prize
Winners

Further recognition followed. A number
of YBAs were shortlisted for the annual Turner Prize, one of the UK's
few major awards for contemporary artists, and duly received additional
TV exposure on Channel 4, the competition's sponsor. Members of the 'YBA
movement' among the Turner
Prize winners, include: Rachel Whiteread (1993), Damien Hirst (1995),
Douglas Gordon (1996), Gillian Wearing (1997), Chris Ofili (1998), Steve
McQueen (1999), Mark Wallinger (2007).

Britart: 2000
Onwards

Ironically, the launch in 2000 of the Tate
Modern - Britain's premier museum for contemporary art- did not provide
a particular boost for YBAs, although the inclusion of their works confirmed
that they had definitely 'arrived.' In early 2003, the Saatchi Gallery
moved from St John's Wood to the County Hall building on the South Bank,
and began its coverage of Britart with a retrospective of Damien Hirst.
Then in May 2004, a fire in Saatchi's storage warehouse caused the destruction
of several important works, including Tracey Emin's Everyone I Have
Ever Slept With: 19631995. In the same year, Saatchi declared
that most YBAs would proved "nothing but footnotes" in history,
and proceeded to sell a large number of YBA works - many of which at a
huge profit.

Famous Artworks
By Young British Artists

Examples of well-known works by YBAs
can be seen in some of the best art museums
in the UK. Here is a short selected list of works. All works are held
by the Saatchi Gallery London, unless indicated. In addition, works by
YBAs can be seen in some of the Best Contemporary
Art Festivals around the world.